Women's Track & Field | April 26, 2018

DES MOINES, Iowa – Western Michigan track and field's Maria McDaniel repeated as a Drake Relays Champion after winning the 5,000-meter run to highlight Thursday's action for the Broncos.

McDaniel, who on the 5,000 in 2015, ran a season's-best time of 16:53.64 to win the unseeded race. McDaniel bested Minnesota's Molly Eastman by nearly eight seconds for the victory.

"Maria took the lead from the get go and had a whole straightaway's worth of space for the entire race," said head coach Kelly Lycan. "Coach Sheehan has done a great job taking her step by step. She hadn't run in two years and she's getting down some really good times. It's amazing to see how quickly Maria's gotten back to that top level of running. She worked so hard to stay fit, not being able to run she did a lot of cross training and really worked her tail off."

Junior Allison Hufnagel started the day ninth in the heptathlon but worked her way up and finished fifth overall after recording 4,700 total points in the seven events. Hufnagel used a strong push in the long jump, javelin and 800-meter run to climb up the rankings.

"Allison made a really nice comeback today," added Lycan. "Early in the season, that's a really good performance for her. The javelin and the 800 are really good events and she's improved a lot in the long jump. When your good at the 800, the last event, it's like having an ace up your sleeve and she's really improved in that event, too."

WMU has a full slate of action on Friday, beginning in the morning with the long jump. The Broncos will field relay teams in the 4x100 and 4x400 preliminaries, as well.